


Spray and Pray

by Alphawave



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Murder Mystery, Romantic Comedy, Spies & Secret Agents, This is going to be a doozy of a story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-13 23:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17497427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphawave/pseuds/Alphawave
Summary: Anastasia Bloodworth is a woman who cares greatly about social stature and reputation, which is why she's horrified when she finds her husband dead by less than saintly means. What was supposed to be a simple investigation into her husband's death leads to a wild goose chase involving the mafia, drug smuggling, government conspiracies, and killer nasal sprays. With her hired private detective, Sirius Li, by her side, Anastasia can only be certain of one thing on her journey.It only gets crazier from here on out.





	1. Prologue

Prologue

Anastasia Bloodworth might have been a _little_ drunk. On the scale of drunkenness—1 being ‘just a sip’ and 10 being ‘dead’—she was somewhere around a 4: unfit for driving but still lucid. Just tipsy enough for the bubbles to settle comfortably in her veins and spread their warm sunlight throughout her body. Anastasia was by every definition a social drinker, which meant that she had the common sense to call an Uber to and from the party venue unlike her more alcoholic friends, who relied on their husbands to chauffeur them around like they were the second coming of Princess Diana.

Her Uber driver, an older Caucasian man who was trying to get a glimpse of the more prominent aspects of Anastasia’s body with his pitifully tiny mirrors, rolled his Toyota to a stop in front of her mansion. She exited swiftly and produced her phone. His eyes take their time travelling up from her body to the mansion behind her, and then to the gem-covered jelly phone case. He rolled the window down and fished around his pockets for his phone.

“It’s 16 bucks, 60 cents, roight?” he drawled.

“Yes,” she said in a perfectly American accent. “16 dollars and 60 cents.”

He blinked rapidly. The automatic lights for the front yard had finally flickered on, illuminating her silhouette in a cold blue-white glow. He saw the dark ebony of her skin and let out a silent “oh” in realization. Anastasia sighed internally. He probably thought she was an aboriginal woman. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had made that assumption.

He tapped something in his phone, humming to himself a tuneless tune. The money was transferred. Transaction complete. Anastasia was about to walk away when the driver called out to her.

“Hey, madam, before you go, gonna give you a little something.”

Before she could open her mouth, the Uber driver grabbed her hand and placed a cheap, thin card on her palm. It had the driver’s name and number on it, as well as a picture of his face. The photo was either taken years ago (not likely) or was heavily edited (more likely) because the man in front of her and the man on the card looked like two different people. She looked up to see the man, apparently named “Luke” according to his ill-made card, wink at her surreptitiously.

Anastasia grimaced at his thinly veiled attempts of flirting. Ignorant of the face she was making, or perhaps because he was as blind as he was ugly, the driver smiled widely.

“Call me on my number next time and I’ll take you anywhere for free, beautiful.”

He gave another ill-suited wink. Anastasia nodded stiffly and opened the gates as the driver pulled the old Toyota out of park and drove quietly through the streets. When she’s sure he was gone, she opened up her phone.

For a second, she thought about Uber and its practice of letting employees live and die by the reviews they received. Anastasia was pretty sure it was the plot of some depressing sci-fi show she watched once and completely forgot about until now. She wondered about her creepy driver and ruminated about the circumstances that led to him becoming an Uber driver. Perhaps he was desperate for cash. Perhaps this was the only job he could do, a pitiful cab job at minimum wage in his clean but old car in the Applecross suburbs.

Anastasia felt a small pang of pity, and perhaps compassion, for this Uber driver. His career could very well be in the palm of her hands. With one review, she could make or break his career.

She opened up the Uber app and gave a 2-star review.

_Car’s clean, drive was fine, but the driver is a creep. AVOID THIS GUY_

She put her phone back into her purse, walked the far-too-many steps to the front door, and stepped inside.

The first thing she noticed was how dark it was. At least the street had the excuse of being dark because the council didn’t want to install too many lights to ‘disturb the wildlife’, whatever that meant. It was barely past 11pm and she was sure her husband should be up. She fumbled around the right wall for the light switches, flicking them all on with a swipe of her hand. She squinted at the sudden assault of bright light on her eyes.

“Joooohn, I’m hooome.”

No response. Anastasia just shook her head lightly, sat down at the staircase and took off her beautiful fake Prada heels. She admired the shoes as the fake stones glitter and glisten in the light before chucking them in a corner with the rest of her shoes. They’ll be fine, she thought. She’ll sort the mess out tomorrow.

“John?” Anastasia called. “I’m back early! John?”

Still no response. That was weird. John couldn’t be out. There was nothing to do in Perth at this time of night except sleep, drink, party, and have sex. John wasn’t a fan of any of those four things.

A small part of her, confined to a tiny corner of her mind, was concerned for her husband’s lack of response but she was just tipsy enough to not care. The Anastasia of tomorrow could deal with that crap. With that out of the way, she crawled up the staircase, retreated into her bedroom’s en-suite bathroom and got a well-earned shower.

As the water poured over her head and shoulders, Anastasia felt her body groan in exhaustion. It was only yesterday that she got invited to go partying at Rachel’s house in Waterford. As always, the people present exceeded the house’s generous capacity, and she had to do a lot of shoving and pushing just to get into the next room. As one of the hostess’s bestie, Anastasia had the 'honour' of talking to every single guest, half of which were over the blood alcohol limit long before they even arrived at the party. It was a mess, but that was how the girls liked it. Anastasia never had fun playing the mom friend but she reached her limit when Rachel began doing random body shots with men ten years her junior all while her husband was gaping in the next room. Anastasia made the prompt decision to bolt out of there, using her dear husband John as an excuse, before quickly calling an Uber home. She didn’t want to be there for the ensuing argument and she definitely didn’t want to be there to comfort Rachel for something she rightfully brought upon herself (again).

She exited the bedroom in her ugly but comfortable pyjamas when she spied light spilling out of the door to John’s bedroom. Slanted rectangles of white dyed the Italian stone tiles and Persian-style rug with an ethereal glow.

“John?” She called again. Still no response.

The niggling tendrils of doubt and worry creep into her mind. It was perfectly normal for John to spend all night working in his bedroom but he always had the decency to respond on at least the third attempt. Her brain conjured pictures of burglars and thieves, of John cowering in the corner while one balaclava-clad burglar bunged him on the head with a baton.

She laughed nervously to herself. “I’m just imagining things,” she stared at the light filtering out of John’s room, “…aren’t I?”

A peek into his bedroom would be alright, right? They were husband and wife after all. Marriage gave you the right to snoop on your partner, she convinced herself, that was why it was invented. She stared through the keyhole. She expected a pristine and clean tidy bedroom with John typing away on his computer in the corner wearing headphones, ignorant of the scolding he will soon get.

Instead, the bedroom was in complete disarray, with furniture toppled over and random objects strewn across the carpeted floor. Something went past the keyhole, blocking the light for a second. It looked remarkably like a man’s hairy arm.

Anastasia stepped back, holding her hand over her mouth to hide a gasp. _OK, there’s burglars. Fuck fuck fuck, what do I do?_ She couldn’t fight them off, could she? She had no training in the martial arts, not unless those Jackie Chan films count. She scanned the hallway, looking for a weapon and her eyes catch on a bag on the floor. She quickly checked inside. It’s John’s, and it had a whole bunch of papers in them, which made it heavy. Did a bag count as a weapon? Anastasia didn’t know but she grabbed it as silently as she could. Her free hand went onto the door handle and turned, but it didn't open. It wasn’t locked, but no matter how hard she pushed, the door would not budge. It was almost as if someone had blockaded the door.

She briefly wondered about any alternative entry points into John’s bedroom. It was on the second floor with its own en-suite bathroom and no other connecting rooms, so unless Anastasia felt like scaling the walls from the outside, she was going to have to break the door down. There was no way Anastasia was going to risk her nails for her husband. A bruised shoulder would be less expensive than a chipped nail.

She braced herself, knowing it was going to hurt, and shoved her body at the door. The first two times did nothing, but on the third time, she was able to force her way through, nearly stumbling to the other side of the room as the door hit the wall with a whack.

“F-freeze, bitches,” she yelled, raising her bag threateningly, only to find that there was no one there. No burglars, no would-be murderers. No John.

With knitted brows, she looked at the messy bedroom. There was no way there hadn’t been a struggle here. John’s pharmacology textbooks had been thrown to the ground, the vase at his deck lying in pieces on the floor. Maybe John was hiding, she thought. She checked John’s spacious closet and she checked the bathroom. She even checked under the bed and behind the curtain and the locked windowsill. Nothing. No sign of him.

“But I could’ve sworn I saw an arm…” That’s when she saw it, a black strap hanging from the door. Tentatively, she pulled the door closed.

And there she found John, unconscious and naked, hanging from a noose with a travel pillow over his neck.

Anastasia groaned, dropping the bag at her feet. “Oh come on, not again, John.” She rolled her eyes as she began to loosen the noose over his neck. “Over and over again, I tell you, _wait for me to be a spotter_ , and what do you do? You go and hang yourself alone. Again!” She’d tell him off good and proper if she wasn’t so exhausted and if he wasn’t unconscious. What good was arguing at him when he couldn’t even hear her? She grumbled insults under her breath, her lips pressed into a thin line. As she moved to pull John down, her hand brushed against his skin and abruptly stopped in place.

He wasn’t warm or clammy. In fact, he was cold. A bit too cold. Frantically, Anastasia tried to find a pulse on his wrist. Was it two fingers, or three? Near the bone or towards the side? She couldn’t remember at all. She tried everywhere on his wrist, but she could feel nothing and he was still very very cold. She waved her hand over his mouth and his nose, hoping to maybe feel the breath escape his lungs but she couldn’t even feel that. He wasn’t breathing at all.

Anastasia stepped backwards into the wall and stared at his body in shock. John was dead. John had actually gone and autoasphyxiated himself to death. He had to go and die the most embarrassing, reputation-breaking way possible. Her friends were going to find out, she’ll become the laughing stock of her friends, and everything she had worked hard to cultivate in Australia will crumble to dust.

“Fucking hell, John,” she sighed.

She went back to her bedroom and grabbed her phone. She dialled 000 and said, in as calm a voice that she could, that her husband was dead and that she needed police. When the call was done, she flung the phone onto her bed and changed out of her comfy pyjamas into a sexy pink, sheer nightgown. If the police were going to come to her house, no way was she going to greet them in those ugly pyjamas.


	2. Bloodthirsty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anastasia has a rough encounter with the Australian emergency services department.

Chapter 1: Bloodthirsty

She will give the emergency services of Australia a point in their favour: they were fast. Her mansion in Applecross was in a closed-off neighbourhood with only one road in and out, so the fact they got here and didn’t get lost on the way was good. Unfortunately, the cops and emergency technicians that did arrive looked as haggard as she felt and were rather upset their evening was ruined by a dead guy yet again. Crime scene photographers were taking an awful lot of pictures of John and his bedroom and nowhere near enough pictures of Anastasia herself. She could forgive that if the police decided to do something other than death photography, but unfortunately one of the constables was arguing with the head EMT, making a long night even longer.

“Look, mate, I ain’t got all day. I gotta look over the crime scene, alright? Just let me do my work already,” The constable said.

“Oh come on, I clearly arrived here first,” The EMT whined. “The ambulance was the first on scene.”

“But my car was the first up the driveway.”

“But it’s still second compared to _my_ ambulance, which means I win this round, which means the score is at 4:2.”

The coroner sighed irately. He jabbed a thumb behind him. “Do you see where my car is? It’s right inside the property. Yeah? And where’s your ambulance? Outside. _Not_ in the property. My win. 3:3.”

Anastasia watched as the argument became more heated, then turned to see the remaining cops and ambulance technicians watch in amusement. They didn’t look like they had any intention of moving. One of the cops pulled a resealable bag of chips out of nowhere and began munching on a handful before handing it to their mate. The bag was passed around the group until everyone had a handful of chips in their hands. Anastasia wasn’t all that keen on letting the cops have their dinner and a show directly outside of her mansion when the flashing lights and sirens must have woken up half the neighbourhood already. She certainly wasn’t going to give the Stevensons next door another thing to complain about. She stomped her way to the arguing couple, plastering on a fake smile.

“So, Officer…” she quickly glanced down to his badge, “—Davies. I need someone to look at my husband’s body.” Her face sharpened into a stern frown. “This has been a very _tiring_ night for me.”

Officer Davies suppressed a cold shiver. “S-sorry. We’ll get right on it.”

Anastasia nodded and turned on her heel, retreating into the kitchen to make herself a cappuccino while the EMTs finally got to work. She sat at one of the many bar stools that lined her kitchen island, nursing the ceramic mug with both hands. She gazed down at her reflection, scowling as she felt her eyes begin to lose focus and her muscles begin to ache. In an hour, she was going to get a migraine, probably because she was stressed. Rightly so, she thought. The frown lines on her forehead were showing again and she completely forgot to do her makeup before the police arrived. She looked horrendous.

“Excuse me, ma'am?”

Anastasia looked up to see a young female constable staring at her dispassionately. Her police uniform was crumpled and her eyes were dead, which only made her impolite smile more fearsome. Anastasia turned her own award-winning smile up a notch.

“Need me for something?”

The officer brought out a notepad. “I’m Constable Andrews,” she replied. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about your husband.”

From the way Andrews was glaring at her, Anastasia didn’t think she had much of a choice but to say yes. “Sure,” she said, pivoting around in her chair to face her new, temporary companion. Constable Andrews scribbled something in her notepad, grimaced, then turned back to Anastasia.

“Firstly, your name.”

“Anastasia Bloodworth, but I’m sure you knew that,” she quipped.

Andrews did not look up from her notepad, nor did she smile. “What can you tell me about your husband?”

“John? He’s the CTO of a pharmacy company. Epionic Laboratories?”

Andrews scribbled it down but made no sign of recognizing the name. “And what about yourself?”

“Isn’t being a housewife enough of a job?”

“From what I heard, you weren’t really staying much in the house in the first place," Andrews scoffed.

Anastasia narrowed her eyes. “And who exactly told you that?”

Andrews ignored her, hastily writing in the word ‘unemployed’ into her notepad. “Now, about the events leading up to your husband’s death.”

“I wasn’t here. I left around 4pm to go to my friend Rachel Montgomery’s party at her place. I came back around 11pm, but by the time I found John, he was already dead.”

“Anyone can corroborate? Any proof you were at the party and not here?”

Anastasia took out the phone she kept in her bosom (ignoring the double take a constable in the background made) and flicked through her Facebook. As expected, it’s filled with pictures of the party, many of which she either featured in or was in the background. She handed the phone to Constable Andrews, who quickly scrolled through it. When she handed the phone back, Anastasia swore Andrews looked ticked off.

“I didn’t do it,” Anastasia clarified.

“So you claim,” Constable Andrews said coldly.

“You don’t sound all that convinced.” Anastasia's brows creased. “Did I do something to offend you?”

Constable Andrews huffed loudly but said nothing.

It was a huff Anastasia understood instinctively, for it was the huff of the lower class, of someone currently in hard times who felt that she did not deserve any of the luxuries she had been afforded with. In the few years Anastasia had lived in Australia, never before did she feel the class divide as much as in this country, and this was coming from a Black woman who used to live in Detroit. Everybody hated you if you were rich, and jealousy ran rampant amongst the people. 

Andrews looked at the notes in her notepad. “You were the one to find the body?”

“And the one who called the police, yes.”

Andrews’s radio crackled. She brought it to her ear, listening to the muted conversation. After a minute, she put the radio in its spot on her belt and turned to Anastasia once more. “About your husband’s death, there’s a few…odd details that I’m hoping you could clarify.”

“Anything!” Anastasia said, all of a sudden hopeful. She coughed into her hand and tried to look less excited. “A-ask me anything.”

Andrews stared at Anastasia suspiciously but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she asked, “How was the body when you first discovered it?”

“How was…the body? I mean…John could be in better shape. He was much slimmer during the wedding.”

“No, I mean the condition of the body. Anything different, a bruise, a scratch that wasn’t there, something like that.”

Anastasia tried to remember but the shock of discovering her husband’s body had clouded her memory. “Nothing I can remember,” she said.

“Not even the broken nose?”

“Broken nose?” Anastasia repeated.

“Broken nose and a broken penis,” Andrews clarified. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Anastasia all of a sudden remembered how she had to shove the door open to get into his bedroom. She didn’t think about it at the time but the sound the door made as it met the wall was a bit off. Almost as if it wasn’t concrete meeting wood but flesh instead. Well...judging by the erectness of John’s penis at the time, she wasn’t incorrect with her previous statement. Either way, she had not made the best first impression in terms of looking innocent.

She glanced at Andrews, who was fortunately distracted by the EMTs hauling something down the stairs. Anastasia didn’t know if she should tell the truth or not. If she did, Andrews might think that she was involved with John’s death, but then if she lied and got caught then she could get a massive fine. Denise got caught that way in her second divorce, claiming she was at her sister’s place when in fact she was at her mother’s. One small lie snowballed and snowballed until she was forced to give her now-ex-husband a 650,000 dollar payout.

“Mrs. Bloodworth?”

“Knowing how big John got, he probably broke his dick before he broke his nose,” Anastasia snorted.

“Mrs. Bloodworth?!” Andrews asked, indignant.

“I didn’t kill my husband. A couple of hours ago I shoved the door open, found him, and tried to free him from the noose. When I found out he was dead, I called the police.” Anastasia stood up from her seat, blinking rapidly as the lights flash and flicker before her eyes like disorientating little fireworks. She grumbled under her breath. Of course she got an aura right now.

She slowly walked away from the kitchen, trying to keep a straight line. She was getting disorientated quickly. She needed to get upstairs and go to sleep already.

“Where are you going?” Officer Andrews snapped.

“You’ve got three guesses,” Anastasia called from the staircase.

She ascended to the second floor, nearly bumping into a couple of officers carrying bags of evidence, one of which contained what looked to be a cotton bud covered in a creamy white liquid. She had half a mind to tell the officers that they were only going to find a disappointing amount of sperm in that sample but the other half of her mind was beginning to throb dully. As they rush past her, she saw the dirty footprints they made on her beautiful Persian-style rug.

“You better clean that!” She shouted.

The officers did not lose their pace, rushing out of the house without an apology.

Anastasia let out a silent curse, stumbling her way to her bedroom and locking the door behind. After a second, she realized the stupidity of locking her bedroom door. The police might still want to question her. Grabbing a pen and paper from her bedside table (a ‘thoughtful’ gift from John), she wrote a short message, pushed the paper under the door to the hallway, covered herself in blankets, and fell asleep.

Ten minutes later, an EMT will attempt to knock on her door before noticing a single piece of paper on the ground. The words ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ were written in black pen, a stark contrast to the white paper and the muddy brown rug that had once been white the hour before.

* * *

 

The days following John’s death had been hellish for Anastasia. Her attempts at trying to forget about John’s unfortunate death was fruitless because her friends reminded her at every turn how sorry they were for her loss and how they were there for her whenever she needed them. Said friends then proceeded to get drunk that night, took a lot of selfies, bawl about their ungrateful husband or boyfriend (sometimes both), and pass out at the jacaranda tree in front of Bethany’s house. So, they definitely felt sad for her. Drinking themselves to oblivion, Anastasia learned long ago, was the Australian way of showing their care.

There was one silver lining to this. John’s sudden death meant that Anastasia had an excuse not to go out. She had told her friends that she needed time alone to mourn and despite their initial protests they agreed to give her some time for herself. With her friends out of her hair, Anastasia then went on to spend her days lying on her couch binge-watching soap operas. Wearing black, of course. She had to be respectful to her deceased husband. All of that binging eventually paid off when, one week later in the morning, she found a letter from the forensic pathologist in her mailbox.

Anastasia didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until her lungs began to burn. This was it. Finally, she had John’s post-mortem results. With this letter, she could get the answers she had been hoping for. Was John’s death a gruesome murder by some as-of-yet unknown assailant? Anastasia hoped so. She’d rather be known as the woman whose husband was brutally murdered than the woman whose husband got off on being hung on a noose.

Anastasia closed the front door behind her and went to the living room, searching for her letter opener.

John was always the one who ever got letters nowadays so she never bothered to remember where the letter opener was. While Epinoic Laboratories might be a world leader in the research and development of migraine nasal sprays, they had yet to master the art of the e-mail, and thus John would get letters and parcels almost every day, sometimes by the dozen. Now that she thought about it, it was a bit strange that she hadn’t gotten any letters or parcels addressed to John, but then again the news of his death had spread exceptionally fast. Twenty people had already posted on her Facebook wall wishing her well, twelve of which sent her a friend request. All of them she vaguely recognized as friends and colleagues of her husband, the very same people she had made an effort to distance herself from. The world of pharmaceuticals was a world she had long since left behind. She had no intentions of returning.

She eventually found the letter opener near the TV. She took the blunt knife and slashed it through the thin edge of the envelope, carefully plucking the stapled papers out. She read them once, then twice, then thrice. Every time she flipped to the final page, her heart sank.

Suddenly there’s the familiar buzz of her phone. Caller ID: Nat. Anastasia sighed, bringing her phone up to her ear.

“Annie, oh my god, I just got back from Singapore and I heard about the news! I’m so sorry for your loss! John was such a wonderful man and a good husband too. You’re going to be so lonely in the house by yourself!”

Out of Anastasia’s three BFFs, Nat was the most individually successful, making it her mission in life to be as much of a pain to deadbeat husbands and wives as possible. She had prosecuted the divorce of a famous local celebrity, started up a law firm, and even learnt a few languages on the way. She was the smartest person Anastasia knew, which also made her the dumbest, for Nat had a talent for starting the worst pub fights, attracting the wrong sort of men, and ruining karaoke night with her banshee-like wails. Nat was the most messed-up person Anastasia had ever met. Unfortunately for her, she liked Nat quite a lot.

“Hi, Nat,” Anastasia rubbed her forehead.

“Oh, I can’t imagine how you must feel right now, so lost and confused. Oh, and you must be so sexually frustrated. Should I send some boys over to your place for company? Or maybe some strippers?”

“No, Nat. No strippers. No men—or women for that matter.” Anastasia wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“Still mourning for your husband, Annie? I can respect that.” Nat said this, but Anastasia knew she was disappointed she didn’t have an excuse to call the local stripper agency.

“Look, Nat,” Anastasia said quickly, hoping to bring this conversation away from strippers. “I’m confused about something. Maybe you could help me? I’m trying to make sense of this coroner’s report.”

“I’ll try,” Nat murmured, curious yet concerned.

Anastasia sat down at the nearest chair and propped the phone up her ear with her shoulder. The papers rested in her hands. “So I got the final results about John’s death. But I’m looking through it and they say he died naturally, and that’s not right.”

“You think he didn’t die naturally?”

“I…I don’t know. John’s death was fishy. I refuse to believe he died this way. Not to me.”

Nat’s lawyer instincts kicked in. “In your opinion, how _did_ he die?”

Anastasia wondered if she should tell Nat about how John died. Nat might be the only friend she had that might not laugh at the circumstances. She might be sympathetic, might help Anastasia find closure. Then Anastasia remembered how Nat almost broke her phone when she accidentally enabled pop-up messages. “Doesn’t matter,” Anastasia sighed. “I just know it’s not right. Who do I complain to for this?”

“Well, as I said, this isn’t my field of expertise, but from the sounds of it, you should talk to the coroner handling your case. There should be a number you could call on that document.”

Anastasia flipped back to the front page. “Which one?”

“Which one’s in the biggest font?”

“The first one.”

“That’s the guy you gotta talk to.”

For the first time since John’s death, Anastasia felt like she was getting somewhere. She smiled brightly, probably the first genuine one she had made this entire week, and Nat couldn’t even see it. “Thanks, girlfriend.”

Anastasia could easily imagine that wide Cheshire grin spreading across Nat’s face. “Anytime, Annie.”

The phone call ended. Anastasia dropped her phone onto the plush cushions beside her, slumped her way down from the couch to the floor, and stared up at the ceiling. The papers fell out of her grip, floating down to her lap. After a few minutes ruminating of the seemingly endless ways the truth could come out and bite her in the ass, Anastasia dialled the number and waited as the automated voice put her on hold. An annoying catchy Muzak rendition of ‘Tequila’ hummed in the air. When ‘Tequila’ began playing for the third time, she hung up, grabbed her purse and swiftly exited her house.

* * *

Cameron Erikson, the coroner in charge of Anastasia's case, was not a middle-aged man with an ill-temperament as his name suggested but a youthful faced mid 30s man with crystal blue eyes and beach blond hair. For a second she thought that perhaps she had come to the wrong office, or that this was someone else entirely, because the man in front of him was so quintessentially Australian that he would fit in better in the cast of Home and Away than the depressing old caverns that was the Coronial Investigation Unit’s building. The only sign that he was, in fact, a coroner and not an actor was his sunken eyes, thin lips, and cheap grey suit.

He stood up from his seat and offered his hand, which Anastasia took. The handshake was just slightly too firm for her liking. “Cameron Erikson, coroner. I’m…sorry for your loss, Mrs. Bloodworth.” He gestured at the seat in front of him, taking a seat in his much more luxurious leather chair.

Anastasia sat down on her tiny plastic chair, folding her hands over her lap. Her smile was serene and calm, undercutting the quiet anger that burned her insides for having to meet this guy in the first place. “Your secretary told you of my complaint, Mr. Erikson?”

“Yes, I have, and…Cameron’s fine,” He grinned. “Or Cam, if you prefer.”

Anastasia was not comfortable enough with him to call him Cameron, let alone Cam. “Have you seen the report on my husband’s death yourself?”

“There’s a lot of things I must go through before I can do that,” Cameron gave a tight-lipped smile.

“So you haven’t.”

“No,” Cameron admitted. “That’s why I asked you to meet me in my office.”

Holding back a scoff, Anastasia rummaged around her purse and set down a brochure on the desk. The words ‘ _When a person dies suddenly’_ could be seen on the right-hand corner. “You remember I requested an internal post-examination of my husband.”

“And we did that. And we would have done that anyway given the unusual circumstances of his death.”

“And yet you still think he died naturally? You really think this was an accident?”

“Mrs. Bloodworth,” Cameron sighed, the cracks of his own façade appearing at his frown lines, “let me explain the results of our investigation. Your husband John has displayed previous behaviour of paraphilia. You yourself have said in your statement that John participated in autoerotic asphyxiation numerous times. The ligature markings are consistent with self-hanging. There are semen samples on and around the body. The results speak for themselves. He fell unconscious during the act and choked himself. An accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation.” His charming façade reappeared. “There is nothing shameful about how he died.”

Anastasia would argue otherwise but she must keep her head high. Her expression cool and her smile still looking natural, she then placed the copy of the postmortem results she received earlier and placed it beside the brochure. She tapped at a specific line. “Then explain this.”

“That is meth.”

Anastasia scoffed. “You’re kidding.”

Cameron stared at Anastasia.

“You’re not kidding…”

Cameron bundled up the papers Anastasia brought into one pile and slid them from the no man’s land to Anastasia’s side. He rifled around a drawer on his side and added a card to the top of the pile. The fake compassion sprung once more. “This must be traumatic to hear, especially after the sudden death of your husband." He gestured at the card. "If you need to talk to a counsellor…”

“My husband didn’t take drugs,” Anastasia insisted.

Cameron’s thin lips thinned even more, making it look little more than two squiggly lines from a red sharpie. “Mrs. Bloodsworth, if I may say, I had personally talked to the forensic pathologist myself, and they confirmed this finding with me. Your husband has indeed been taking meth, and for quite some time.”

This didn’t make sense to Anastasia. John was a shut-in workaholic who only ever stepped out into the sun for company luncheons he couldn’t excuse himself from. He had no vices; never drank, never smoked, never even seemed to have an interest in anybody that wasn’t Anastasia. And anyway, John had been painfully honest about his kinks. No man who liked to be choked and tied up would hide that they used drugs.

“May I say something?” Anastasia smiled serenely.

“Yes?”

“That is utter bullshit,” she said, still smiling.

“Mrs. Bloodworth,” Cameron started, rapidly losing his patience.

Anastasia placed her crossed arms on the desk and leaned forward, her head slightly askew. In her head she had a mini-catalogue of poses specifically designed to both seduce and intimidate. She called them her _power poses_. This was pose#21, also known as ' _let me see the manager'_.

Cameron stiffened visibly. The pose was working. “Mrs. Bloodworth,” he repeated.

“So does this mean you won’t investigate my husband’s death further?” Anastasia cooed, her voice like honey.

Cameron blinked. He’s entranced but the spell only worked for a second. “I-I suppose we could turn the investigation into an inquest. B-but the evidence is quite clear and there’s nothing suspicious enough that would normally warrant an inquest.”

“Not even for me?” Anastasia asked, extending one arm to slowly drift a finger down Cameron’s arm and he shivered. Her hunch was perhaps too right. A little more seduction and Cameron might cream himself in his pants there and then. She could possibly charm him into changing the death on the official record with one evening together with him but she knew the repercussions of such an action far outweighed the rewards.

Her finger trailed slow circles on the back of his hand. Cameron shivered visibly, eyes agape.

“I…” Cameron retreated into his seat, looking much smaller and fly-like than he really was. He cleared his throat loudly in a desperate attempt to regain his lost masculinity. “Perhaps your husband’s death should be further looked into. Maybe I can run some tests on his organs. I-I really don't think I can do an inquest on his body though.” He finally looked into her eyes and she swore his height shrunk by twenty centimetres. “T-that being said, autoerotic asphyxiation is a rather unusual death. Something could be learned from this case. You, um…won’t be able to get your husband back until the inquest is over, so you might want to postpone on the funeral and life insurance.”

Anastasia laughed softly, shaking her head. She stared into Cameron’s eyes purposely, a spider that had captured a fly. She let her fingers linger on the back of his hand before standing. Cameron stared dumbly, trapped in her web.

“I don’t care about the money,” Anastasia said. “The only thing I care about is my husband’s death.”

She collected the papers and dropped them into her purse. With a rapid turn of her heel and a flick of her hair for good measure, she left Cameron Erikson’s dingy office for the equally dingy hallway, closing the door behind her. It’s then when she’s walking, as the forensic pathologist fifty metres away tripped and dropped his sandwich to the floor, and the scanner in front of the phlebotomist’s office collapsed due to the weight of an overweight man’s posterior, that Anastasia finally let her plastic smile drop.

She rummaged her purse for her phone and opened up its browser. She typed in the words ‘how to hire a private detective in Perth’ and then, after a moment, opened up a new tab and typed ‘what is an inquest’. Her face narrowed into a rare look of concentration as she searched the results. Anastasia’s mind was for once uncluttered, empty of the many social graces that consumed her thoughts. If the people investigating John’s death were so incompetent, she will conduct her own investigation. She won’t allow herself to be embarrassed by John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _If you like the story, give me a comment or kudos. You can find me @alphawave-writes on tumblr and on discord 'thekingofsadness#0076'_

**Author's Note:**

> _Hey guys, this is my first original story, so feedback and comments would be very helpful. I love mystery comedy romances, and if you do too you've come to the right story. This story is only going to get crazier from here on out._


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